Fulcrum
by OhSoDeadly
Summary: He sees the humanity in the things he destroys, and the shadows close in. But Isaac Clarke is not done yet. Set during Dead Space 2. One-shot.


A/N: I do not own Dead Space, or "Keeping Me Human" by JT Machinima. I dropped a sneaky lyric in the fic somewhere, can anyone find it? Enjoy reading!

It's gotten to the point where he's actually glad to fight his way through the mines.

The things he fights are all fucking deadly in their own right, and it's easy to just think of them as an assortment of razor limbs and scaly flesh to carve apart and burn, but there's always been this split-second of

_horror beyond what the mind can process this is why the Marker will be the death of me it tries to cram all this into a mind that can't process it and there's nothing left to do but let the nightmares win_

hesitation. Hesitation, right? Right. There's a moment of hesitation when he sees the deformed and sagging lump with features far too recognisable for his liking twist into something that almost resembles…a smile? A frown? A scream of agony? He blasts it into charred ruin with whatever he has to hand, and he moves on to the next abomination.

Then he curses himself, because he's wasting ammunition he badly needs and he should know better, a whole lot fucking better. Without limbs, they're just cartoons gone mad. Without heads, they're no different. So he resolves to put his fear aside (fools himself into thinking he can).

But the memory stays with him, and it's getting pretty crowded in his head.

Every time, a different face. Isaac is the straight man in a comedy of errors. Isaac is the one lost in the maze of mirrors. Isaac is the one to arrive late to the party and find out everyone's wearing a mask.

But there the analogy dies, because he hides behind his own. His thick grille of pale green light keeps the darkness at bay, protects his head

_far too late for that far too late what thrashes and screams behind the eyes will never be cured only annihilated_

lets him see to the truth of things.

And the truth is that he's _fucked._

He barely made it through the Ishimura the first time around. The second wasn't much better. The thick plastic, the tape, the foil sheets-they didn't keep any of the blood off the floors. Whose idea had that been? The same damn fool son of a bitch who had decided the Marker was a good idea. Was a cat to be set amongst pigeons, and while the entire fucking world went to shit they'd just sit back with clipboards and…figure things out.

They were the reason everyone was dead. And shambling around. And why he was _here, _shredding through demented things.

So when he reaches the mines, a dripping, blacker-than-black abyss where the only light come from halogen bulbs and the eyes of the slashers, he's actually glad. He's not quite giddy with relief, because he's left that part of his life behind, but the feeling is _there, _palpable like the gel from the innumerable medpacks he's used.

Because the Necromorphs down here? They were made from miners, mostly. The miners wore helmets. Apart from the odd specimen, their faces (or what passes for their faces) lie behind battered, but very intact, metal.

And he can almost come to appreciate them, as he gets to work like the craftsman he used to be, because he's wising up and knows where to aim, what to use against what, and slowly but surely they fall down in chunks of viscera and flesh and he's the only one left standing when the boom of line racks has faded-

He starts to think he might survive this-

_shoved up against this wall orange light screaming into his eyes something gripped around his neck and gasping for breath no it can't be a hand it can't be her hand she's dead Nicole is dead get out get out out out of my head now get out get out_

-and then there's something forcing its way past his lips, and he realises it's not the madness, not the dementia, not this blazing-eyed phantom that looks like _her, _it's him:

"Because you were my everything. And if I let you go, I've got nothing left."

He slumps back down. The pressure is gone. Nothing tries to kill him in that moment. But with acceptance comes a bleakness, just as bad, if not worse, than the dementia.

He is going to die down here. If he is lucky, he will die down here and that will be the end of it. If fortune should slip even slightly, he will become what he destroys and mutilates. He will have found something worse than the madness, and that thought is truly terrifying.

But Ellie is still alive, and he is still alive, so he gets to his feet, reloads his plasma cutter and keeps moving. 


End file.
